garbage

Lucy Walker’s Oscar nominated Waste Land is just another documentary about a Brazilian-American artist who travels to his birthland to create portraits of garbage pickers out of recyclable materials.

But it’s much more than that. Waste Land is about hope, collaboration, the environment, finding dignity through poverty, and the redeeming qualities of trash. (All those human spirit-y things I never like much under less felicitous circumstances—though I do like trash.)

If you regularly recycle household materials, you’re likely moved by a spirit of doing something good for the environment. For many residents of the developing world, though, “recycling” materials thrown out by others is an act of survival. There’s likely no better place to witness this dynamic than Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, and photographer Vik Muniz made the landfill, and the catadores that reclaim materials from it, the subject of a series of photographs (shown as a part of his The Beautiful Earth exhibit).

Once again proving the adage that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, Justin Gignac collects New York City garbage and carefully packages it in plastic cubes, which are then signed, dated, numbered, sealed and of course, available for purchase. [Via]

The second season of THE GREEN has arrived at long last. Tuesday, starting at 9PM, make sure to tune into Sundance Channel and start learning about your world’s environment. Image 1 From The Screening Of Garbage Warrior (Photo Credit – Godlis) The first week of THE GREEN features the incredibly inspiring Eco-Documentary GARBAGE WARRIOR. The…